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by Panache
Summary: Post X3 Spoiler:: In the aftermath of X3, old friendships become important once again. BeastStorm undercurrents.


Disclaimer: It's someone else's sandbox. I just play here because it's fun.

Author's Note: So this is only my second X-men fic (the previous one written under another penname), and my first fic with these two characters, but for some reason I seem to be continuing my campaign for the unficced hero. Anyway I would love to know what all think. Particularly since there will be two additional parts to this (although this part can be read as a standalone).

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She should have recognized him, but it had been so long . . . and anymore the sight of a stranger in the mansion was nothing but a cause for panic. She had neither the Professor's ability to sense every presence, nor Logan's razor sharp sense of smell, so really she'd had no choice but to go chasing after him. After all the safety of the children was her responsibility.

It didn't make her feel any less ashamed.

At her sharp "Excuse me!" he'd turned, unsurprised and unconcerned, even though she could hear the crackle of power in her voice. She should have know then, seen him in the quirk of an eyebrow or the easy, charming smile, such a welcome relief in a place where smiles always seemed in short supply. His hair was the same shade of rich chocolate, perhaps beginning to make a strategic retreat from his forehead and certainly newly streaked with gray, but still she had spent many of her first nights here standing in the shadow of his doorway, listening to the alternately turbulent and soothing strains of the Rolling Stones juxtaposed against Vivaldi, and watching that fine head of hair for any sign that he knew of her presence, prepared to slip away in an instant, to avoid being drawn into yet another espousal of propaganda.

It hadn't been until the night he'd left and his music collection had materialized on her bed, that she realized how many times she'd been caught.

Yes, if she'd noticed his hair or even taken a moment to meet those shockingly blue eyes, she would have known. But her attention wasn't on his face. Instead her eyes were riveted on his hands, or more specifically, what he held there.

Ororo had to curl her fist to keep from lashing out then and there at the sight of Jimmy's pale form in his arms. Instead there was a simultaneous crack of thunder and flash of lightening, illuminating the hallway. Still, he remained unperturbed.

"I'm sorry, my dear, was there something you needed?"

In the end it was the cultured voice that stopped her cold, that marvelous, gentle but commanding baritone—the one thing his mutation had spared, left unchanged. Recognition seeping through thunderous rage, Storm found herself grateful for the darkened corridor and Hank's terrible eyesight.

Thankfully at that moment, Leech stirred slightly drawing his knowing gaze away from her acute embarrassment. "Dr. McCoy?"

Beast looked down at his young charge, his normally leonine grin, now a disconcertingly, beautifully human smile. "It's alright son. I am afraid that we may have inadvertently violated your curfew, but perhaps Ms. Munroe will not hold it against us for too long?"

Diplomatic to the end, he made it a question, leaving the final say on a school matter to its headmistress, though both of them knew what her answer would be.

She longed to retort with something snarky about punishing Henry for his corrupting influence, to engage in a bit of intelligent adult banter even with someone whose sense of humor far outstripped her own, but she was aware of Jimmy's pleading eyes on her, the slight flush of dread in his cheeks. The boy needed this, needed her approval of this relationship. Nothing, if not painfully aware of his own fragile place in the mutant community, he needed to be told that this one miraculous piece of good fortune was truly what it seemed.

"Yes, of course." She smiled down at Jimmy and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, "But, I'll need your promise not to brag. Not everyone can capture the Ambassador's attention so completely."

"Well, it's not everyone who can show me how to reach the end of Final Fantasy."

Jimmy's face lit with the self-satisfied grin of a child who has just taught an elder something. "He was stuck."

"Woefully behind the times," Hank amended.

"Stuck."

This was obviously an old argument. Ororo intervened before it escalated. "Whatever you may or may not have been, though I'm certain Jimmy's right and you _were_ stuck . . ." This time she caught the wry, quirked eyebrow. "It is way past curfew, so get to bed or I promise dire consequences for you both."

"Jimmy, your first lesson in politics, diplomacy, and survival, _never_ refuse the command of a lady, particularly not one as powerful and breathtaking as your headmistress." With that Henry McCoy straightened to his full, and still fairly impressive, height, and clicking his heels together, managed an abbreviated bow before turning to pad down the hallway to the young mutant's room.

It wasn't until it sunk in with her how silently he moved, that Ororo looked down and glimpsed Hank's bare-feet peaking out from the cuffs his well-cut trousers.

The sight made her smile.

* * *

She was waiting by his car when he came down, the smile on her face almost parental in its exasperated amusement. Perhaps leaping turret to turret and swinging off the ivy before somersaulting down to the gravel was a bit showy, but it would be a long time before he could indulge in such acrobatic pyrotechnics again. _Not exactly fitting behavior for an Ambassador to the UN_. 

Besides Ororo was gracious in her amusement, clapping softly as he landed. A nice change from his driver, who hadn't even looked up from his paper, simply extended the hand-crafted Italian shoes out the window, by now immune to any overt displays of power by his employer. It was, of course, one of the reasons McCoy kept him, but every once in awhile it was nice to have an appreciative audience.

Straightening, he still looked down, ostensibly to brush at the cuffs of his now perfectly fitted suit, but in truth, he found Ororo's presence disconcerting. It had been one thing in the shadowy hallway, with young Jimmy to think about, all his focus trained on maintaining the pretext of normality for his small friend, on pretending that reverting to a purely human form meant little to him one way or another. But now, out here in the cloudless night, which might or might not have been her doing, illuminated by the natural, but uncomfortably radiant, full moon, he felt unaccountably naked, laid bare before her majestic implacability.

_Oh my dear you grow too like Charles with every passing day._

"Was there something you truly needed, Ororo?" The question was brusque, a busy man with millions of other things to think about—out with it, and so forth. Of course, it had little effect on a woman who had once been worshipped as a goddess, and had seen him dancing to the Stones in cutoffs and a Hawaiian shirt.

"About Jimmy . . ."

"Yes, I am terribly sorry about that, I promise it won't--"

She stopped him with a gentle hand on his forearm. "Thank you."

He looked at her now, startled at the absolute gratitude in those words. Ororo Munroe was not an easy woman, patient to the extreme, but as slow to grant praise or thanks, as she was to anger or chastise.

Now though as she looked up at him in the moonlight, he didn't need his reading glasses to see the weight of the burden she'd shouldered or the toll it was taking. Her usually calm façade, as undisturbed as those blue skies she could call forth at will, was tight, shadowed with the clouds of too many responsibilities.

As though newly aware of just how much the strain shown through, she stepped away and turned to look up at the moon, a habit he recognized from their school days. They all seemed to turn a little inward, to seek out their particular powers, and draw on those strengths when the burden of simple human things grew too great.

"Jimmy's situation is . . ." She caste about for the right word, something appropriately diplomatic he supposed, but in the end Ororo always called a spade a spade. "It's difficult, Hank. We've always used our powers to teach the children, to help them learn control . . ."

"And by his very nature, he deprives you of your best teaching tool."

Ororo let out a breath of relief. "Exactly. Not only that, but the other children, well, it's difficult enough to get used to having powers . . ."

She didn't complete the sentence, but her meaning was clear. Here, students learned to take their powers inward, weave them into the very fabric of their perception of the world. For many being around Jimmy, would be like going suddenly blind. Even as he took this in, his mind flicked back to the hallway, to Ororo standing back at the very fringes of the boy's range. Perhaps it was not only the children who were having trouble adjusting to the new student.

Laying a hand on her shoulder, both in support, and possibly absolution, he murmured, "You have surmounted greater obstacles, Ororo."

He didn't see the wan smile, as her hand moved to cover his own. "_We_ have surmounted greater obstacles. I'm not sure he ever prepared any of us to stand alone. The team was all to him. You know, he never really forgave you for leaving."

There was no question as to who _he_ was. "The less traveled road, my dear. Someone had to try it."

"And has it made all the difference?"

"I don't really know, perhaps when one looks back at the end." It was an old discussion, an argument he'd tread too many times. Did working from the inside make it any better, or simply provide the dangerous illusion of progress? He was so used to the curves that he wasn't prepared for the detour.

"I never really forgave you for leaving either." It was a soft admission, probably not meant to truly be heard, but his hearing had always been keener than she gave him credit for. Her acquisition of his music collection was testament to that.

They stood for a moment in the moonlight, the soft spell of memory holding them prisoner in the shadow of this place which had meant so many things to each, but it had always been about more than the place for either of them, and one by one they were losing those connections, so if they clung a little tighter than necessary to what, _to who_ was left well was that really all that surprising?

In the end, it was Ororo who reclaimed herself first. Patting his hand in a gentle, but absolute dismissal, she stepped away, and turned to smile at him, once again, the beneficent, untouchable goddess. "You should come back more frequently. We're not so far away from New York, you know. It would mean a lot . . . to Jimmy."

"Yes, well, the next time I know there's some time in my schedule, I'll be sure to contact you." Lord, could he sound like any more of a stuffed-shirt?

She laughed and stepping forward to the barrier created by the open car door, reached up to tug teasingly at his whiskers. "Don't be ridiculous, this is home. You don't need an appointment." The affectionate gesture softened to a caress, as she whispered, "Just come home, Henry."

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All comments and criticisms are welcome.

Panache

(who really should know better than to go see the new X-Men movie with her favorite mutant, when she's got too many other fics in the fire)


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